Parrish used a number of models for his figurative work
between 1895 and 1934, when he announced in his famous Associated Press
interview: I'm done with girls on rocks! I've painted them for thirteen
years and I could paint them and sell them for thirteen more. That's the
peril of the commercial art game. It tempts a man to repeat himself. it's
s an awful thing to get to be a rubber stamp. I'm quitting my rut now while
I'm still able.[31]

Before this period, Parrish had taken a page from many
of the old masters (Rembrandt and Rubens to name just two), who at the beginning
of their careers used their faces and figures extensively in their paintings.
There were three reasons for this: the model's face and shape were infinitely
well known to the artist, the model was easily accessible and the price
was right (no modeling fees had to be taken into consideration). During
his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy, the young artist did a series of
twenty-five extremely beautiful models from the nude for his men's day life
class. All of these images are documented in a small catalogue written by
Virginia Colby in 1976 and titled In the Beginning.

Thomas P. Anchutz, one of Parrish's teachers at the academy,
taught painting, drawing and modeling there for almost thirty years. He
is credited with teaching his students the wonderful observation skills
that are needed in the study of anatomy, in order to develop a skillful
control of the initial drawing. Parrish's future bride Lydia Austin was
the model for his first commercial endeavor, the Harper's Bazaar
Easter cover (1895). Lydia posed as the figure for the two pre-Raphaelite
figures flanking each side of the composition. This was the commission that
first launched Parrish's artistic career.[32]

Before their children were born, Lydia appeared in many
of the early covers painted by the artist for Scribner and Century Magazine,
such as October 1900 (1898), Madonna and Child (Christmas
1898), The Duchess at Prayer (1899), Story of Ann Powell (1900),
The Milkmaid (1901) and The Grape Gatherer (1904). The manner
in which Parrish depicted Lydia -- as mother, maiden, Madonna, bountiful
earth mother -- attests to the respect and admiration the artist demonstrated
for his wife. Lydia appears to symbolize these ideals for her husband. The
artist thus effectively placed her on an impossibly high pedestal, raising
the bar of expectation perhaps out of reach of a mere mortal.

Besides posing for the nude figure of Potpourri,Air Castles and Dinkey Bird, which I addressed earlier in
the section on photography, Parrish posed for many magazine covers and stories
dealing with both serious and humorous subjects. Last Rose of Summer
(1899) for Outing Magazine;The Cardinal Archbishop (1901)
and Vigil at Arms (1904) for Scribner, as well as the exquisite luminous
Winter produced in 1906 are some examples of his serious side. The
artist also reveled in his keen sense of humor by mugging outrageously for
the camera in preparation for many of the paintings in which he used himself
as model. He is the perennial child cavorting through make-believe and having
a riotous good time. He wants to make his audience enjoy his escapades into
imagination, but he also wants to demonstrate that it is his artistry that
beckons, beguiles us and keeps us asking for more.

Parrish was the model for both the guards and the court
jester in John Jacob Astor's mural Old King Cole (1906) and the central
figure in Pied Piper (1909). He appeared on at least twelve covers
for Life and probably twenty covers for Collier's. Parrish
modeled for Jack Frost in the last cover that he did for this magazine.[33]

He dressed in drag to model for the figure of Mother Goose
in a Fisk Tire advertisement. He is the male figure in Peter, Peter Pumpkin
Eater (1918) done for the Ferry Seeds Company, and his face played several
comic figures in Louise Saunders' 1925 children's book classic The Knave
of Hearts.

Parrish also modeled for two of his friends from the Cornish
Colony. Kenyon Cox (1856-1919) was elected as an associate member of the
prestigious National Academy of Design and submitted a portrait of his artist
friend as his necessary entry requirement. He urged him to pose, promising
not to knock out any of his teeth or to tattoo the initials A.N .A. (Associate
Member of the National Academy) on his chest. Cox posed the youthful illustrator
in left profile, arms across his chest, wearing shirtsleeves. Parrish later
even offered to build the frame for the submission.

Ten years later another artist friend, the sculptor Paul
Manship (1885-1966), created a medal commemorating Parrish with his image
on one side and a flying unicorn on the other. It was left at the Parrish
outdoor mailbox on December 24 as a surprise Christmas gift to the artist.

The Parrish children were soon drafted and eagerly recruited
as (sometimes unwilling) models for their artist father. His first born,
Dillwyn Parrish, had inherited his mother's dark good looks and splendid
eyes. His brother Max Jr. had his father's blue eyes and the tow hair of
his youth. Both Dillwyn and Max Jr. posed for two of the children in the
Pied Piper. Dillwyn (who had an uncanny ability to draw intricate
trains and locomotive engines at a very early age) may have suffered from
an early form of dyslexia, which he eventually! conquered. His early travails
and struggles in the home school room are sympathetically memorialized by
Parrish on several Collier's covers: Alphabet (1909), Penmanship
(1910) and Arithmetic (1911). He was a winning and irresistible
model whom every local woman would have liked to either mother or romance
(and later probably did). The youngster also posed for the cover of the
book Peterkin (1912).

Both Max Jr. (Peter Piper, 1919) and daughter Jean
(Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, 1923 and Jack and the Beanstalk,
1923) posed for Ferry Seed ads. Jean, the blonde, blue-eyed dynamo who combined
her mother's great bone structure, soulful eyes and independent, willful
temperament with her father's artistic genes and stubbornness, was truly
the apple of her father's eye. Being the only girl in a family of three
older brothers, she learned to hold her own in any situation.[34]

Young Jean was the Parrish child her artist father used
most frequently to model for him. We seldom see the third child, Stephen,
modeling for any painting. Stephen appears to have :connected with his father
not through his interest in his father's art, but through his thorough understanding
and enjoyment of mechanics and how things worked. Both father and son spent
many happy hours tinkering in the elder Parrish's very complete mechanic
shop. Both were adept mechanics, who enjoyed building things from scratch
and fixing whatever problems their many cars might develop.[35]

Ten-year-old Jean appears for the first time in her father's
work in 1921. She modeled for Mary, Mary Quite Contrary and for the
classic oil titled Evening. In 1922, she was immortalized as the
eleven-year-old nymphet smiling innocently at the reclining figure of her
friend Ruth (Kitty) Owen in Daybreak, the painting that Parrish referred
to as his magnum opus. This was also the year in which she posed as the
figure of the Prince in Knave of Hearts.

Her father later used his teenage daughter for the figure
of the virginal nude in Stars (1926) and Dreaming (1928).
Just before leaving for Smith College, she posed for Ecstasy (1930),
the famous Mazda calendar painting depicting the form of a young woman posing
at the brink of a precipice, exalted by the beauty of the world beneath
and around her and perhaps unaware of the dangers that could befall her
were she to stumble... yet fully enjoying her moment of glory and daring
in the sun. Perhaps this painting symbolized the father's hopes and worries
for his ambitious child ready to embark on her own life, away from the watchful
eye of the doting parent.